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The Hampdenshire Wonder

Part of MIT Press / Radium Age

Author J. D. Beresford

Introduction by Ted Chiang

Paperback

$19.95 US

The MIT Press

5.29"W x 7.88"H x 0.74"D | 9 oz | 40 per carton

On sale Mar 04, 2025 | 282 Pages | 9780262551410

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Fantasy & Sci-Fi Prose > Sci-Fi > More Sci-Fi...

In this pioneering science-fictional treatment of superhuman intelligence, a mutant wonder child’s insights prove devastating.

Science fiction luminary Ted Chiang introduces The Hampdenshire Wonder, one of the genre’s first treatments of superhuman intelligence. Victor Stott is a large-headed “supernormal” mutated in the womb by his parents’ desire to have a child born without habits. Known as “the Wonder,” Victor surveys humankind’s science, philosophy, history, literature, religion—the best that has been thought and said—and dismisses it brutally: “So elementary . . . inchoate . . . a disjunctive patchwork.” Rejecting “the interposing and utterly false concepts of space and time,” the Wonder claims that life itself is merely “a disease of the ether.” Unable to deal with the child’s disenchanting insights, his adult interlocutors seek to silence him . . . perhaps permanently.

J.D. Beresford (1873–1947) was an English dramatist, journalist, and author. His proto-science fiction novels include The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), A World of Women (1913), and The Riddle of the Tower (1944, with Esme Wynne-Tyson); he also wrote in the horror and ghost story genres. A great admirer of H.G. Wells, he wrote the first critical study of Wells in 1915. His daughter, Elisabeth Beresford (1926–2010), was creator of the literary and TV franchise The Wombles.

J. D. Beresford View titles by J. D. Beresford

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Series Foreword - Joshua Glenn
Introduction: “The Idea is Inconceivable” - Ted Chiang
Part 1: My Early Associations with Ginger Stott
1 The Motive
2 Notes for a Biography of Ginger Stott
3 The Disillusionment of Ginger Stott
Part 2: The Childhood of the Wonder
4 The Manner of his Birth
5 His Departure from Stoke-Underhill
6 His Father’s Desertion
7 His Debt to Henry Challis
8 His First Visit to Challis Court
Interlude
Part 2 (Continued): The Wonder among Books
9 His Passage through the Prison of Knowledge
10 His Pastors and Masters
11 His Examination
12 Fugitive
Part 3: My Association with the Wonder
13 How I Went to Pym to Write a Book
14 The Incipience of my Subjection to the Wonder
15 The Progress and Relaxation of my Subjection
16 Release
17 Implications
Epilogue: The Uses of Mystery

"However you interpret Beresford’s touching short novel, it remains, like its protagonist, a wonder."
—Washington Post

"One of the earliest exemplars in SF of the genius unbound, the more-than-human intellect whose insights are sublime and terrible . . . The Hampdenshire Wonder has more than just historical value, and earns this latest reprint."
—Locus Magazine

"What makes the Radium Age series so valuable is how it illuminates the origins of science fiction tropes we take for granted. . . . The Hampdenshire Wonder tackles transhumanism decades before it became a preoccupation of science fiction and posthumanist philosophy."
—Boing Boing

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